Custom guitar to be raffled to benefit sheriff's deputy

Thursday

Feb 28, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Craig S. Semon TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

A one-of-a-kind rock 'n' roll collectible — a working guitar and work of art depicting the authentic autographs, likenesses and symbolic images of Alanis Morissette and Mario “MC Souleye” Treadway — will be raffled off this weekend to help a local man fighting for his life.

Scott Fitzgibbons, 41, who is married and the father of three daughters, was recently diagnosed with stage IV esophageal cancer.

Mr. Fitzgibbons, who is a Worcester County sheriff's deputy and former Wales policeman, is the son of former Sturbridge and former Chatham police Chief Kevin P. Fitzgibbons.

Michael Cantwell, who served as a police officer for 10 years (and worked under Chief Fitzgibbons in both Sturbridge and Chatham), spearheaded a combination benefit event and guitar raffle for his ailing friend.

“Scott and I grew up together. He was diagnosed with stage IV esophageal cancer in mid- to late December,” Mr. Cantwell said. “Scott is currently going through eight sessions of chemo, biweekly. And they will conclude another PET (position emission tomography) scan to see where his cancer is at and re-evaluate from there.”

As to getting Morissette and Treadway to literally sign on to this benefit, it helped to have connections.

Morissette's worldwide debut album, “Jagged Little Pill,” is the best-selling debut album by a female artist in the United States and the highest-selling debut album worldwide, selling 33 million units globally. On May 22, 2010, Morissette married Treadway, who is formerly of Sturbridge and a 1999 graduate of Tantasqua Regional High School. The two have a son, Ever Imre Morissette-Treadway, who was born Dec. 25, 2010.

“We had the connection to Alanis Morissette. My brother is best friends with her husband to the point that the parents are coming and sitting at my brother's table,” Mr. Cantwell said. “This may be the only thing that they (Morissette and Treadway) have both signed together, to be quite honest with you. This is a feat. This is not something they do. They are very, very private people. And this guitar is one-of-a-kind.”

Before the guitar was a unique rock 'n' roll curiosity and keepsake it was just a few blocks of unfinished wood. That is, until Paul Girouard got his hands on it.

An accomplished cabinetmaker and woodworker, Mr. Girouard makes his guitar from the neck (which, he said, is the most complicated part of a guitar to construct) to the body, as well as the fret-board, all from scratch. As for the electronic components, Mr. Girouard said that is probably the easiest part of building a guitar.

“I don't do two of them alike,” Mr. Girouard said. “If somebody says they want me to make them that guitar (pointing to the wall of custom-made guitars), there has to be something different in it. There would have to be something to make it unique.”

Mr. Girouard, who owns Fine Lines Custom Cabinetry & Furniture and Girouard Guitars, both at 4 Stagecoach Road in the Fiskdale section of Sturbridge, has always loved music and has been playing the guitar since he was 8 years old.

“I didn't want to play the piano anymore. My mother was killing me with the organ,” Mr. Girouard said. “I tried to make a guitar when I was a kid but never finished it. But it has always been something that has been in the back of my mind.”

One day about four years ago, a customer came into his business with a broken guitar and asked Mr. Girouard if he could fix it.

“We started looking at it, looking at how the body and the neck was all put together and realized that it wasn't anything that was all that difficult from a construction standpoint,” Mr. Girouard said. “There're a lot of things that are very precise, more so than in cabinetmaking. But it wasn't anything that we couldn't figure out.”

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Girouard made his first guitar from scratch and shipped it out to one of his working-class musician friends to try it out. With a few suggestions attached, the guitar was returned to Mr. Girouard after its rigorous workout in the rock 'n' roll trenches a month later.

The main criticism was the weight of the guitar, said Mr. Girouard.

“We had used lace wood, which is a very dense hardwood from Australia, very heavy,” Mr. Girouard said. “And his main complaint was, when he is standing on stage for three hours and it's hanging off his neck, he goes home with a sore shoulder.”

Mr. Girouard rattles off different types of “good tone” woods he uses for his guitar. This includes ash, alder, mahogany, maple and walnut for the body and some exotic woods, including Brazilian cherry, ebony and rosewood, for accents and fret-boards.

In the case of the one-of-the kind Alanis-Souleye guitar, the body is made of alder.

“It's a very good tone wood,” Mr. Girouard said. “A lot of your Fenders are made out of alder.”

While Mr. Girouard did all the woodworking on this Alanis collectible, it's Meredith Berthiaume of Monson who did the artwork.

Ms. Bethiaume is an accomplished pyrographer, an artist who decorates wood with burn marks resulting from the controlled application of a heated object, such as a poker. After she burned the images of Morissette with her free-flowing and flower-decorated locks blowing in the wind and Souleye's snake-adorned microphone, she colored and then lacquered it.

“Meredith just has this vision and she can just see it and put it down on the wood,” Mr. Girouard said. “And she just adds to it. It's just incredible. I don't know how she does it.”

The Alanis-Souleye guitar will be on view from 4 to 6 p.m. Saturday at the Sturbridge Host Hotel, 366 Main St., followed by a fundraiser, “Support Fitzy's Fight,” starting at 6:30 p.m. Tickets for the guitar raffle can be bought during those hours for $25 each. Table seats for the fundraiser are sold out, but standing-room tickets for $30 will be available at the door.